I watched Hotel Rwanda recently and was shocked by the mixed message we here from this and movies like it. The movie tells of the ethnic cleansing/genocide or what atheists/evolutionary believers would call survival of the fittest that took place in Rwanda during the early 90s.
People seem surprised by things like this as they happen over and over through history. There really only seem to be two different explanations. Either the Christians are right and God is real, believe He created us and these actions are objectively wrong because God has spoken and declared them to be in His word or we are simply the products of random and amoral actions over time and there is no basis for calling anything wrong. It could further be said that "survival of the fittest" would more likely mean these actions are right if we were able to meaningfully claim such a category for discussion within our worldview.
Atheist, believer in evolution - don't fret even if you are one day the object/victim of genocide like these 1,000,000 Rwandans, you can take comfort in making your contribution to the random meaningless progression of life on earth!
Monday, August 22, 2011
Friday, August 12, 2011
Pragmatism = The Atheist's moral compass!
Pragmatism, defined by me as "whatever works is right", is truly the atheist's moral compass. From the family, to education, to the highest levels of politics, pragmatism is how "right" and "wrong" must be determined. Of course the person with the most power or the "experts" they hire get to decide what the desired goal is and what "whatever works" looks like in the situation at hand. In the end, it is might that makes right. Of course their is no moral basis for accusing others of wrong as long as they can say this is what works.
Whatever works for ME is "right" - if I want to be a logical and consistent atheist!
Whatever works for ME is "right" - if I want to be a logical and consistent atheist!
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Have you wiped out a weaker species today?
Survival of the fittest is at the very root of atheistic understandings of life. If you are not eliminating weaker species - you are not being consistent to your beliefs! The Christian's won't do this for you, so go conquer the weak or don't be surprised if the Fiddler Crabs or Humming Birds rise up and wipe you out one day!
Monday, August 1, 2011
Is eating your children only a legal issue?
If not for laws making it illegal, atheists should be consistent and affirm eating your children is as acceptable as eating any other living things. You might claim we should protect all animal life or you may have some standard by which you decide which animals are expendable for food or other reasons (crop harming insects for instance) and which are too advanced (able to feel) or just too "cute" to kill or consume.
I would propose that it is impossible to live in our culture without killing some animals for some reasons. If it is OK to kill a chicken and eat it, then why not a child? You might say you are exempt form this reasoning because you are a vegetarian and would never advocate killing/eating a chicken, but are you really being consistent in your treatment of animals? Do you kill insects that invade your home, bacteria that invade your body or cause the death of animals through your part in polluting the environment? Are some kinds of life of greater or lesser value - says who?
As one famous animal rights expert put it -
"There’s no rational basis for saying that a human being has special rights. A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. They’re all animals.” — Ingrid Newkirk, Washingtonian magazine, Aug 1986
Newkirk was trying to make a case for animal rights by suggesting we have just as much reason for protecting the rights of rats as children. She has a point, but unless their is some absolute moral standard from which we derive things like rights then she may be making the opposite point - if we have no basis for rights for rats then there is no basis for rights for people either.
Unless God has spoken, as the Christians claim, then any distinction between mammals and bacteria as worthy of rights is completely arbitrary. If you are to be totally true to an atheistic/evolutionary worldview, it would be wrong to distinguish even plant life or rocks from the sphere of rights as they all equally exist as products of the amoral process of time and chance acting on matter. Of course the rights they have is not the right to exist without being harmed, but the right or even obligation to consume each other as much as they are able as part of the evolutionary process.
If God has not spoken and given us specific information on morality as it relates to the world, then there is no basis for even having such discussions of "rights". Survival of the fittest must prevail and if it were legal to eat your children, no one could make any kind of moral argument regarding the rightness or wrongness of it.
If atheists were to act more like atheists and less like Christians (living like morals were real/absolute) we may not have survived long enough as a species to have these kinds of discussion (our parents may have eaten us), but do you want to be a consistent atheist or live?
.
I would propose that it is impossible to live in our culture without killing some animals for some reasons. If it is OK to kill a chicken and eat it, then why not a child? You might say you are exempt form this reasoning because you are a vegetarian and would never advocate killing/eating a chicken, but are you really being consistent in your treatment of animals? Do you kill insects that invade your home, bacteria that invade your body or cause the death of animals through your part in polluting the environment? Are some kinds of life of greater or lesser value - says who?
As one famous animal rights expert put it -
"There’s no rational basis for saying that a human being has special rights. A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. They’re all animals.” — Ingrid Newkirk, Washingtonian magazine, Aug 1986
Newkirk was trying to make a case for animal rights by suggesting we have just as much reason for protecting the rights of rats as children. She has a point, but unless their is some absolute moral standard from which we derive things like rights then she may be making the opposite point - if we have no basis for rights for rats then there is no basis for rights for people either.
Unless God has spoken, as the Christians claim, then any distinction between mammals and bacteria as worthy of rights is completely arbitrary. If you are to be totally true to an atheistic/evolutionary worldview, it would be wrong to distinguish even plant life or rocks from the sphere of rights as they all equally exist as products of the amoral process of time and chance acting on matter. Of course the rights they have is not the right to exist without being harmed, but the right or even obligation to consume each other as much as they are able as part of the evolutionary process.
If God has not spoken and given us specific information on morality as it relates to the world, then there is no basis for even having such discussions of "rights". Survival of the fittest must prevail and if it were legal to eat your children, no one could make any kind of moral argument regarding the rightness or wrongness of it.
If atheists were to act more like atheists and less like Christians (living like morals were real/absolute) we may not have survived long enough as a species to have these kinds of discussion (our parents may have eaten us), but do you want to be a consistent atheist or live?
.
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